Blogs are now an established part of the chattersphere/public conversation, especially in international development circles, but Duncan Green finds academic take-up lacking. Here he outlines the major arguments for taking blogging and social media seriously. It doesn’t need to become another onerous time-commitment. Reading a blog should be like listening to the person talk, but with links.

Before I started teaching at LSE in January, I had the impression that the academics and researchers around the school were totally social media savvy – prolific tweeters like Charlie Beckett and top blogs like LSE Impact are high up on my follow list.

It turned out the impression was, ahem, a little misleading. A good proportion of the people I have come across may be brilliant in their field, but when it comes to using the interwebs, tend to sound like the querulous 1960s judge asking ‘What is a Beatle?’ (‘I don’t twitter’). Much of life is spent within the hallowed paywalls of academic journals (when I pointed out that no-one outside academia reads them, the baffled response seemed to be along the lines of ‘and your point is?’).

So why should they rethink? Here are some initial arguments, confined to blogs and twitter (the only bits of social media I engage with). I’m sure there are lots of others – feel free to add:

Remember that a blog is a ‘web log’, i.e. an online diary. Regular blogging builds up a handy, time-saving archive. I’ve been blogging daily since 2008. OK, that’s a little excessive, but what that means is that essentially I have a download of my brain activity over the last 7 years – almost every book and papers I’ve read, conversations and debates. Whenever anyone wants to consult me, I have a set of links I can send (which saves huge amounts of time). And raw material for the next presentation, paper or book.

Making sure someone reads your research. Look no further than the excellent LSE Impact blog for evidence: here’s a quick search of their posts:

Patrick Dunleavyargues blogging and tweeting from multi-author blogs especially is a great way to build knowledge of your work, to grow readership of useful articles and research reports, to build up citations, and to foster debate across academia, government, civil society and the public in general.

These increases are massive compared to the typical abstract views and downloads these papers get- one blog post in Freakonomics is equivalent to 3 years of abstract views! However, only a minority of readers click through – we estimate 1-2% of readers of the more popular blogs click on the links to view the abstracts, and 4% on a blog like Chris Blattman that likely has a more specialized (research-focused) readership.

It gives you a bit of soft power (let’s not exaggerate this, but check out slide 15 of this research presentation [ppt] for some evidence). Blogs are now an established part of the chattersphere/public conversation, so you get a chance to put your favourite ideas out there, and spin those of others. People in your organization may well read your blogs and tweets even if they don’t read your emails.

Blogging is a great antidote to that feeling of anticlimax and futility that comes after you send off the paper or the book manuscript, and suddenly the true indifference of the universe becomes apparent. You can keep discussing and communicating with interesting people, and keep the existential crisis at bay.

And don’t forget the free books, also known as ‘review copies’.

And the chance to publicly insult your enemies (not relevant in my case, obvs, as I don’t have any).

“I Don’t Have Time”

The counter-argument is bound to be ‘we don’t have time’, but if you take too long, that probably means the blog won’t be very accessible. Reading a blog should be like listening to the person talk, but with links. This post took me precisely 30 minutes to write, including the ‘research’.

This piece originally appeared on the LSE International Development blog and is reposted with permission. Keith (k.mcdonald@lse.ac.uk) is currently the Managing Editor of the International Development blog. Get in touch if you want to have a go.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Impact of Social Science blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our Comments Policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

About the Author

Duncan Green is Senior Strategic Adviser for Oxfam GB and Professor in Practice in the department for International Development at LSE. He is also author of the book ‘From Poverty to Power’. He can be found on twitter @fp2p.

[…] a change of tactics and a new focus on driving engagement through self-managed media. For instance, blogging can be a fairly efficient way of communicating research, publicising your own papers and remaining […]

[…] for reference management (writing), the Open Library of Humanities and RIO Journal (publishing), Twitter & blogging (outreach), altmetrics, R-index and Publons (peer review and assessment). How to get on grip on the […]

[…] for reference management (writing), the Open Library of Humanities and RIO Journal (publishing), Twitter & blogging (outreach), altmetrics, R-index and Publons (peer review and assessment). How to get on grip on […]

[…] for reference management (writing), the Open Library of Humanities and RIO Journal (publishing), Twitter & blogging (outreach), altmetrics, R-index and Publons (peer review and assessment). How to get on grip on […]

Great article Duncan
Yeah it doesn’t take much time and if you do it regularly you become good at it. Blogging can help in academics and we should really take this seriously as it will really help the developmental process of a student.

[…] Brilliant blog by Duncan Green about the importance of blogging for academics and researchers as well as about how to get into the habit of blogging regularly: An antidote to futility: Why academics (and students) should take blogging / social media seriously […]

[…] style guide, blog templates, and even blogging workshops. Even better news – blogging is now taken seriously as a strategy for building an academic research profile, so it’s not a wasted effort for anyone to up-skill in […]

I couldn’t agree more. I have been blogging since 2010. It makes you and your research searchable. My academic research on SuperBowl ads probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day outside a couple reads for lit reviews, but one post on my blog lead to it being written about by a searching journalist in Slate, then Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Forbes, New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Magazine … and quoted in 7 books. I am sure this this increased the academic citations, but also simply got the research out there and discussed which is rewarding.

Blogging is also a great way to learn. When i don’t know about something like a new development in my field I force my self to write a blog post about it. I have also been requiring my students to blog since 2012. They learn by researching and writing posts, but also applying strategies from class. I hear back about how student blogs lead to countless career opportunities for them.

[…] I want to use this blog as a place to put things that pertain to my teaching. As this school year winds down, I find myself eager to get back to broader thinking. I use Facebook to post things of interest, most of it related to teaching. But there really should be a more systematic way to catalog interesting links and ponder their meaning. Inspiration here: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/10/26/why-academics-and-students-should-take-blog… […]

[…] And let’s not forget about this blog! While it may not be considered “social media” per say, it could be considered a version of public branding, since I am creating a written version of my identity. Blogs are a great way to “put your favorite ideas out there, and spin those of others,” as Duncan Green notes in his article An Antidote to Futility: Why academics (and students) should take blogging / social media seriously. […]

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